Scylla Rhiadra

Thanks, Ginger! That's what I really NEEDED to do today . . . go shopping. /me sighs

I really really was not going to post a "pet peeve" in this thread because, you know, positivity, and good vibes, and stuff. But seriously. AUTOHIDE SCRIPTS!!!!!! DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE!!!!!

I need your top. Okay, not YOUR top; I wouldn't want to leave you cold and exposed. But I need one of those though! Where did you get it?

Ceka, that's really beautiful!

For centuries, the stories that we in the West have told each other, passed on down the generations, and celebrated, have overwhelming articulated the voice of white people (and more specifically, white males of a privileged socio-economic status). The poets and novelists we read, the philosophers we study, the historians who have shaped our view of the past -- almost all of them have been, until very recently, white. This despite the fact that colonialism has meant that POC have been full participants, if not always willing ones, in our culture since at least the 15th century. A lot of those stories derived from the dominant white culture are really great, and worth reading, sharing, and celebrating. I teach some of them: I value them. But there are other voices, other perspectives, other ways of thinking about the world and our place in it that have been not merely neglected but, to use your word, consciously excluded from our canon of stories. People of colour in particular have a great deal of catching up to do before their very distinctive voices can be properly heard over the dull roar of the overwhelming domination of white perspectives. There is nothing "exclusionary" about what is being proposed here. No one's stories are being suppressed, no voices are being silenced (as the voices of POC have been for most of the past millennium). This is an enormously positive initiative: it will add new perspectives. We will all be very much the richer for it. I don't pretend to speak for Meka, who I'm sure can articulate her own views much more eloquently than I have here. But that's my two cents.

QED. That is soooooooo not my look.

Ah, ok! I'm not very good at the "identify the mesh head" game, because I only have two mesh heads, both Genus. So, I naturally assume that every mesh head is a Genus. It's sort of a case of "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a junk drawer where you can lose it." Because, really, who in the name of God wants to use a hammer anyway?

. . . which is becoming progressively more repulsive with each passing day, while you remain young, dark, and beautiful? Now, that I can believe.

What a beautiful avi you have! And nice shot! (Are you wearing a Genus Baby Face? It looks a bit like?)

Really? Cool. I had assumed the point was just to demonstrate that your reflection can, contrary to all expectation, be seen in a mirror.

Counterparts. I meet the most fantastic people at Metropolis. (ETA: Wow my boobs look HUGE in this one.)

A combination of both, actually. Basically, you set the pose in front of a mirror (or in my case window), and take the pic from behind. (I think Orwar used green screen for his mirror?). And then, without changing the pose, you swing the camera around to the front, having either de-rendered or applied a transparent texture to the opposite side of the mirror/window/wall, and take a second pic, this time from the front showing what will appear in the reflection. Then, using image editing software, you flip the reflection shot horizontally, resize and crop, and layer it over top of the first image. In my case, I added a lot of transparency to the reflected image so that you can see what was behind it. I also had to erase those parts of the reflection that should be hidden behind my avi. It's a bit of work, but the biggest problem (I found) was getting the angle of the reflection shot right. I'm not sure I quite succeeded, but it looks good enough.

No bubbles? That's not a real bath. (Great shot though!)

I owe huge thanks to @Orwar, who clued me in, via his explanation of how to produce a mirror reflection, on the means by which to do this!

Yes, although that was years ago. I haven't looked recently to see what sorts of new in-world technology might be available for publishing, but I don't have the sense that it's changed much. There seem to be three basic ways to publish text in SL: Using a "book object" (now mesh, but I used to use sculpties that were quite nice looking) with notecards and images (textures) loaded inside. The main advantages are that the book itself can look very nice and decorative, and this means of accessing text doesn't take you outside of the viewer. The disadvantages are that notecards have few formatting options, and are generally crappy to read, and there is no way to embed images directly into them. Using a "book object," as above, with a script that opens a web page (the now very old script written by JJ Drinkwater was easy to use, and worked very well). Again, you can get a nice looking book, and a web page (if you're building your own) can be formatted to produce a pretty good reading experience . . . but it takes you, mostly, right outside of the viewer. And that means, in essence, that you aren't really reading "in-world" at all. A flip-book like the old Intellibook system. This works very nicely, and unlike the other two methods, it reproduces something like the experience of reading in-world, but i think they're a major pain to produce, and the book itself isn't particularly attractive (although the pages can be, because they're just images). And because you're using images rather than machine-readable text, you can't search, copy and paste, etc. Also not very practical for anything longer than about 20 or 30 pages. I don't know, really, how many people actually read in-world. There are advantages to viewer-based reading systems for things like instruction books, and so forth . . . but do people really read novels sitting on their virtual couches in their Linden homes? Mostly, probably not. That's one reason I made some serious effort to make sure that my books (which were all "functional") looked nice enough that you could put them out on your bookshelves or copy tables. I kept waiting for the technology to advance. Maybe something that combined the HTML-on-a-prim with the flip book format would work well? But if there has been any advance in the technology or the tools, I haven't run across it.

I'm in the midst of a mini-vacation from the forums, but I have a couple of new photos I thought I'd share. This one was a bit of an experiment, and a lot of work, but I think it mostly came out okay.

Yeah, I've seen it. Never seen a production there, though. There's a great clip of Stephen Fry playing Malvolio in a production there:

One thing I found kind of bizarre about it is that they did theatrical productions there that had these HUGELY elaborate sets, way more appropriate to a production of, say, Cats or Le Miz, than to an actual Elizabethan stage. What's the point of reproducing, down to a pretty minute detail, the specifics of an Elizabethan theatre, if you're just going to ignore that detail and produce your plays like you were doing a Broadway blockbuster???

Oh, sorry. It was/is probably the best known study of SL (not that there are too many of those). Heck, it was even reissued in paperback! It's pretty good, actually. 2008, so it's a bit dated now, but it's surprising also how much of it still rings true. I find economics scary generally, so, yeah. One sim that was pretty popular was the reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. Another that i recall, and that I had somewhat mixed feelings about, was a reconstruction of the Western Front in the Great War put together by Oxford University: it focused on the British poets of that war. (Somewhere I have a pic of me wearing a nurse's outfit there!) Neither have most other people. I wouldn't worry about it.

Well, anthropology is an obvious one: you'll know Tom Boellstorff's Coming of Age in Second Life. Also economics, marketing, and related disciplines: I've run across more than a few students who were modeling virtual world economies as both a manageable way of approaching the laws of economics generally, but also the specifics of virtual economics. The students I knew best were mostly library and information studies students: this was back in the day when virtual worlds were going to be the "3D web." ETA: Rolig beat me to it!! I've also known of history and literature students who were brought in-world to experience immersive historical environments, but I don't think those were full courses. Oh, also digital humanities students, although DH started neglecting SL some time ago.

Well, I can't speak to this particular project, but I've certainly known of schools assigning SL as projects. In fact, I've met with students who were enrolled in entire courses that were devoted to SL. I used to get invited to skating parties for one such group regularly (and I knew the prof IRL, so can attest to the legitimacy of it all). Mind you, this was all some years ago. I'm honestly a bit surprised this sort of thing is still happening, tbh.

Hi Sweet, You don't really tell us enough about what sort of information you want, nor the kind of project this is, for us to be very helpful. Is this a university course? College? High school? In any case, there are probably only a few educators here to respond knowledgeably, and probably even fewer virtual students. I have some suggestions, however. 1) There is a subforum here for "Education." You can try posting there, although I don't think it's likely to be very helpful. I'd suggest you be more specific about the nature of your project if you want input. You can find it here: https://community.secondlife.com/forums/forum/316-second-life-education/ 2) If you go the SL Destination Guide, which is a (far from complete and not very accurate) list of places to visit in SL, you'll find a subcategory for "Education" in-world. I think there are over 50 places to visit. You might visit some, and see also if you can find someone to contact at one of these places. https://secondlife.com/destinations/learning There is an educators ListServ as well, called SLED (SL educators), but it's mostly for academics. Consider visiting Caledon Oxbridge in-world or Virtual Ability: both are places you should find both educators and help. Use in-world search to find these. Good luck! (And tell your teacher or prof or whoever that they should really be giving you more guidance than they evidently are. SL is confusing enough for people who are just here to enjoy themselves: it must be hell for an uninitiated student!)

Are you really comparing participation in a form of role play that is premised upon the notion that women are inherently inferior, and best disciplined by rape . . . with scrambling around in a club after a sploder? Really? Well, the "Wild West," historically, was racist as all ****. But I'm guessing that very few Wild West RP sims focus on lynchings, or the genocidal displacement and slaughter of indigenous peoples that were a very important part of that story. I suspect they're more about gunfights, and romancing the buxom barmaid or the comely school marm. Whereas in Gor, rape, sexual slavery, and the utter subservience of women is one of the most important elements of the RP. So, yeah, I'd have much less of an objection to the Wild West stuff. Seriously Haselden, come and commune with the friendly and peaceful woodland creatures. I don't know any tarsks or tharlarions, but I can introduce you to some very decent otters, and a most accepting moose. I'll bring a picnic lunch! It'll be fun! And you'll find that they're all much prettier and less demanding than those giant insect things.

Does the tournament accept women entrants?

I'll be really interested to see where you go with this, Meka. I think that an exploration of the experiences of RL POC in SL has the potential to provide some really worthwhile insights. That said, for reasons laid out by Lil, above, as well as others, you may find this a somewhat fraught project. Documenting the experiences of POC (or women, or members of the LGBTQ community) on a platform that is, in some ways, all about self-representation and exploration is likely to raise some very different issues than you'd face discussing experiences on platforms, such as Twitter, FB, or Skype, that are more securely "anchored" upon "real life" identities. In fact, you may even run across some push back from some who might argue that RL identity is not only irrelevant, but actually out-of-bounds in the context of SL. But maybe you already know all of this! And there are others who are much more qualified to speak about it than I -- I'd recommend you touch base with Pussycat Catnap, above, to start with : this is a subject to which she has certainly given much thought. Good luck! I look forward to reading what you produce!